​Stories from PBL Path

During the Fall of 2016, a team of Southern University and A&M College graduate students set out to explore the Whitney Plantation. No ordinary group of graduate students, their mission at the Whitney Plantation was no ordinary task. ​These alternate certification students were also teachers in elementary schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As a part of the collaboration between their Field Experience course, iDoSchool.org, and PBL Path, these teachers explored the intersections between the Principles of Place Based Learning, the design elements of Project Based Learning, as well as the factors that Dr. Lisa Delpit suggests foster excellence in schools.

The Expedition:The Whitney Plantation was the “place” in this Place Based Learning experience. Coincidentally, the Southern University students were able to join a class of undergraduate education students from Southeastern Louisiana University. The prospect of rain on a chilly December morning only added to the intensity of the expedition. Dr. Ibrahima Seck, theWhitney Institute’s Research Director, guided the teams of teachers through the memorials and exhibits on site. As teachers experienced the plantation through the perspective of slaves who had lived and worked here, their task was to seek out artifacts, photographs, narratives, quotes, and facts from the expedition to help them as they explored the Driving Question:

How do we leverage the rich resources of the Whitney plantation to build robust projects for our students?

With these artifacts, teachers then created a Project Snapshot that incorporated the legacies of slavery in a manner appropriate for their grade level. Teachers leveraged this Project Snapshot to create PBL Units designed to incorporate storytelling components and connect students to their history, with authentic community products and calls to action.Stay Tuned....As a group, we were fortunate to indulge in a Q&A Session with Dr. Seck and Caitlin Sheehan, Education and Group Sales Coordinator. To make sense of this powerful expedition, teachers created a 6-word story to capture their feelings about what they had just experienced. In the act of sharing, natural intersections between the stories became evident and grounded the work in this shared experience. Teachers’ children participated as well; out of the mouths of babes, one 10-year old expressed that he felt:

HappySmarterInterestedEducatedExcitedSurprised

An immense power engulfed the room after seeing how their own children reacted to the experience, giving a vision of how powerful the place based learning experience would be for their students.In exploring the gift shop, we noticed a New Orleans area school had a team of students who produced a book of their own narratives after experiencing the Whitney Plantation entitled Now is Your Time. The title strikes me as the quintessential call to action!Now is YOUR time, join us as we dive deeper into the PBL Path partnership with the Whitney Plantation and teachers in local schools. Our upcoming blog series will highlight the stages of preparation, personalization, and production as we journey with another team of teachers to the Whitney Plantation and create robust projects for their students.

But the fun doesn’t stop there… PBL Path and teachers will then experience the place with students!Stay tuned and follow us on Twitter @PBLPath for more updates and the latest resources.

I’m an Instructional Facilitator at a school with a winning basketball team. I go to the games and watch a whole community of like-minded coaches, players and fans who know what the end goal is – no question. They know the importance of strategy. They can see the necessity of revision. They appreciate the power of team reflection and the learning that comes even with losing. They take collective responsibility and can therefore celebrate success together. Then those same players walk into the classroom and the game changes.

​I’ve recently been working with teachers who have volunteered to teach an elective course, having about 10 days to say “yes” to the opportunity and design the course, all while wrapping up their current semester. After my initial excitement around supporting them to plan what was sold to students as a “project-based course” we met to map out the semester using backward design.

Here is where my metaphor applies. Much work has been done in this K-12 school to standards map and create exemplary designs for learning (a.k.a. unit plans) with K-5 grade level teams. However, the secondary teachers for these new elective courses haven’t experienced this backward design and just want to know, in the most urgent way, “what am I teaching on Monday and where am I getting the resources to pull this off?” An essential question, indeed. The luxury the K-5 teacher teams, and the basketball team, were afforded that the secondary teams were not, was big picture planning. Being able to envision the whole and how daily instruction – both content and strategies – lead us closer to the end goal.The Difference Between Surviving and ThrivingMany of us survive in the classroom. If we’re able to build relationships with our students - two points. If we’re able to align our content with the standards - score another basket. Formatively assess and use data to drive our instruction - three pointer. Unfortunately, just surviving means we’re worn out halfway through the game. To have thriving classrooms that impact student learning, planning for teaching needs to be respected as much as executing the plan. When presenting at a recent conference I admitted to participants that the teachers I coach are close to mutiny every time I say, “the standards are your curriculum,” until they’ve gone through the process of standards mapping and their co-created plan is made visible. An administrator in the room said, “curriculum fidelity frees teachers up to teach,” and I had to agree. If you give teachers their class schedule mere days before the school year or semester begins then you better have a guide for them to follow. That said, if you want innovation, if you want teacher teams (and students) that can adapt, think critically and collaborate, then time to map their way to the win is imperative.How School Leaders Can HelpSchool and district leadership can provide the leverage to prioritize big picture planning, giving teachers time to big picture plan for teaching content, concepts and skills, using high-yield instructional strategies to engage all learners. Leaders, ask yourselves:

​Why is time for big picture planning important?What will happen if we don’t prioritize this change?Why haven’t we done this before?What does this goal conflict with?Who has capacity to lead this work?How do we involve all stakeholders?Could the planning begin within an existing structure (PLCs, professional development opportunities, study groups, etc.)?How will we know if it’s working?

How Teachers Can AdvocatePrioritizing big picture planning begins with school leadership, but responsibility also lies with teachers and instructional coaches too. What can I do? Begin by asking yourself a few reflective questions.What are my expectations for planning at the start of a school year or semester? How much time do I typically spend in “big picture mode?” Is the time sufficient? Do I rely on curriculum provided by my school or district? Does the curriculum lend itself to big picture thinking? Are my students aware of the big picture of instruction? How would they articulate it?What are my expectations for professional development time and structures to support big picture planning? Who has influence in that arena? Have I used my voice to advocate for timely big picture planning? How can I ensure that my colleagues and I don’t normalize untimely scheduling?

Nothing But NetNow that you’ve read this far I can admit that I’ve never voluntarily played a sport in my life. I’m strictly a single-sport spectator from a basketball family, where sitting in the bleachers became a way to spend quality time. One thing I admire about the players is how they can adapt and change the trajectory of the game on the fly with mere eye contact, hand signal or shout from the coach. Although the teaching profession is often tied to sluggish bureaucracies, I’ve seen that same transformative power happen in the classroom when teachers own their practice, when leadership provides the leverage and when student learning is everyone’s end game. With planning and reflection, all school teams can have nothing but net.

To learn more about Erin Sanchez, a PBL coach, practitioner and resource provider who prides herself on being a realist with just enough vision to be disruptive when necessary, please visit our Team Page.

I knew it was a loaded question and that my answer could make or break the trajectory of the conversation.

"Well..."

I paused. I didn't want to deter the now young man whom I had taught in high school. I wanted to build upon the connection we just made at the Wall of Honor over a selfie.

And who doesn't love a selfie? These kinds of questions being posed midway through a tour of a plantation with a focus on the slave experience signaled that some level of introspection was occurring, and he needed a thought partner. I was honored, thinking to myself, "Questions like his give my life purpose!"

"...I believe in the universality of one creator and that at the core, major religions have one thing in common - love."

I glanced his way to see if that landed well and quickly added "...BUT I was raised Baptist and Catholic, so what's up?"

"I'm mad Ms. Momo! I don't understand why we didn't learn this in school. I'm REALLY mad at my people for insisting on maintaining their belief in religion! Religion that's STILL being used to hold us down!"

Without hesitation, he divulged his worries, explaining why and how he has decided to become a teacher. His undergraduate coursework connected him to the Whitney Plantation tour.

You see, there's a point in the tour where Dr. Seck, the Director of Research for the Whitney Plantation, described to us the process of re-naming the human property when they arrived at the plantations. Religion, names, and families were all stripped from the enslaved Africans whilst their skills, traditions, and talents were exploited and replaced with forced Christianity and manipulated Biblical scriptures, which slaves were not even allowed to read. Imagine a life where being caught with a pencil could mean losing your hand at the chopping block! THIS is how you debilitate a people - destroy their families and terminate their education. Bringing awareness to the importance of family and education is a pillar of the Whitney Plantation's mission.

The young man, my former student, was on to something. His next question let me know that he meant business, "So what can WE do? How do I change my people's minds?"

Eureka! This is the purpose of Place Based Learning! This is the reason why students must be immersed in the PLACE to truly encourage the ways of knowing and to arrive at this purpose-driven inquiry in a culturally relevant way. Our conversation turned into comparisons of slavery to more contemporary issues and the many forms of activism that we all can take on as we traverse day to day.

All of the inquiry we see here could quite possibly have evolved in a traditional textbook learning experience of slavery...perhaps. Yet to actually experience the place where slavery occurred and to read and hear the narratives, the true stories from the point of view of the enslaved Africans themselves; this is the power of PLACE, the value of authentic community partnerships! We don't have to imagine the depth of inquiry. The young man's questions speak it loudly.

Because I'm a math teacher at heart, geometrically speaking, a place is a particular point in time and space; place is also a portion of space available or being used by someone. In our community, one point in time and space has been preserved for our exploration and learning – the Whitney Plantation.

What places have stories to share in your community? How will you use these spaces to facilitate learning experiences for your students? What is there to be taught that your students "are not learning in school”?

We'd love to hear from you! Tweet us @PBLPath, and stay tuned for more of the purposeful work being done in partnership with the Whitney Plantation!

In October of 2015, I experienced my first plantation tour. Having traveled to the south for the past 30 years, I had never wanted to visit a plantation. Plantations seemed an odd venue for tours that celebrated the heyday of the old south, the ultimate symbol of white privilege. I wondered how individuals could celebrate weddings, anniversaries and retirement parties in places that harbored the pain of those who had been enslaved.

However, the Whitney Plantation piqued my interest. My daughter was a senior at Loyola New Orleans. An article in the LOYNO caught my eye; the story was about Alumnus John Cummings, M.B.A./J.D “…who invested time and money to create the Whitney Plantation, America’s first….museum of slavery, which takes a hard and honest look at the real story of plantation life. (Dyer, Angelique” “Unflinching Honesty”, LOYNO, Summer, 2015.)

John Cummings chose to tell a different story by sharing the narratives of past slaves - adults and children - who lived and labored on the former sugarcane plantation. Whitney Plantation is a memorial to all those who were enslaved.

Upon my first steps on the grounds, I was in awe of the power of this place. There are black granite memorial walls that share the stories and names of over 350 slaves. The Field of Angels records the names of at least 2000 slave children who died before their second birthday. In the middle of the Field of Angels, a statue of a black angel holding a baby memorializes their journey to heaven.

After that first visit, and for many months, I was haunted by what I saw and experienced. Having just launched PBL Path, I was intrigued with the idea of creating a partnership with the Whitney Plantation and nearby schools. I spoke to my colleague and friend, Charity Parsons from Baton Rouge about creating a collaborative partnership. We believe that Place Based Learning provides a pathway for students to uncover the origins of systemic racism through understanding the historical implications of slavery that occurred literally, in their backyard. Understanding the historical perspective and the root causes of racism, we believe that young adults can impact their community, their world and the lives of others.

There was a sense of urgency to get the project off the ground after the Alton Sterling shooting, the subsequent protests in Baton Rouge and the killing of four police officers during the summer of 2016. Charity began making contacts with schools and teachers to see who would like to be involved in the pilot project. To date, PBL Path is working with Park Elementary in East Baton Rouge Parish, and Dr. Lisa Delpit and Southern University teacher candidates, who will be implementing projects in a variety of middle schools throughout Baton Rouge.

When we met with Dr. Ibrahima Seck, a Senegalese historian and the Director of Research for the Whitney Plantation, both Charity and I felt we were in the presence of greatness. Dr. Seck is an unassuming man with a huge heart and a passion for telling the true story of slavery in Louisiana. After our meeting we had a plan in place and our collaborative partnership was launched. Dr. Seck left us with these words, “Education is reparation. This is how we amend these prejudices.”

Charity has been conducting workshops with Park Elementary teachers and teacher candidates from Southern University on our design principles of Placed Based Learning. Saturday, December 3rd will be the first expedition to the Whitney Plantation to uncover project ideas. Possibilities include:

Oral histories

Case studies

Community events

Children’s literature/teaching tools

Public art/expression

Creating partnerships with public institutions

Impacting policy

Museum installation/interpretive signage

Awareness campaign

Community policing projects

The Whitney Plantation provides a powerful learning environment for local students to explore first-hand the history of slavery in the US and, specifically, within Louisiana. This understanding builds historical context and sheds light on the impact of systemic racism across many institutions today. Through the exploration of story, students will discover the narratives of those enslaved while creating a counter narrative that gives them ownership of their future. Stay tuned for more stories about this collaborative partnership; project ideas and student work in the coming months.

By: Erin Sanchez​Thanksgiving can be a precarious holiday for Place Based Learning. I’ve conducted a number of workshops across the country where primary teachers wanted to take the Indians and pilgrims coloring sheets they had been assigning for years and turn them into a “project,” replete with kids in black and white and feathered headbands. How do we tell well-intentioned teachers that what they are doing is dangerous and aggravates historical traumas? How do we keep traditions without telling our children lies?

This year my daughter started kindergarten. We got through Columbus Day unscathed with nary a mention of the homicidal opportunist, but last week a letter came home announcing a Thanksgiving play, in which my daughter had a part and a line to memorize. She would be “Native American #2” and say something about the pilgrims’ hard winter. It was autumn of her first year of school and I was about to become THAT parent.

​After agonizing over the email to the principal and teacher (in which I pointed out the troubling irony of the only Latina girl in class playing the Indian), I got the most appropriate response and resolution I could hope for. Instead of perpetuating the myth of a peaceful, uncomplicated event that scholars and tribal historians agree happened very differently, the school chose to cull the universal themes of sharing, respect and community-building, hosting a gathering where songs and stories of giving thanks, from the many cultures represented in class, will be shared.

Place Based Learning, at its core, is about connecting – to one another, to our environment, to ourselves – in the most authentic and curious voice we have. When we think about ideas for projects we want to explore with our students, do we begin by asking, “Whose voice hasn’t been heard? Whose story hasn’t been told? How does this place speak to us?” Even with complex historical events like Thanksgiving, allowing students to grapple with ambiguous questions gives rise to the possibility of a new generation of ideas, more creative than anything we’ve imagined. Whether it’s celebrating intercultural themes in kindergarten or high school seniors grappling with systemic racism, we all have a responsibility to be THAT parent/teacher/child/leader and shape our little place in the universe.